Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.
Videos filmed by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the AP showed settlers attacking a man Adra identified as his brother, Adam Adra, who was hospitalized with bruising to his left hand, elbow and chest, according to hospital records shared with the AP.
In another video, a settler chases a soldarity activist through an olive grove, tackling her to the ground.
Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.
He described Saturday’s events as “horrific.” “Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”
Another co-director, Yuval Abraham, said he was “terrified for Basel.” “What happened today in his village, we’ve seen this dynamic again and again, where the Israeli settlers brutally attack a Palestinian village and later on the army comes, and attacks the Palestinians.”
